Last-minute attack ads make dubious claims

With only a few days before the election, some unfamiliar groups are stepping up efforts to persuade Spokane-area voters against casting ballots for particular candidates.

One ad arriving in the mail this week praises Republicans and criticizes Democrats on several fronts, including a claim that the GOP wants to put sex predators in prison, but Democrats spend money on “sex change operations for incarcerated felons.”

The ad from Citizens Action Group cites no specific votes, and organizers of the Spokane-based independent expenditure group did not return calls seeking explanation. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections says the department has not performed any sex change operations for inmates.

“We don’t have any money in the budget for that,” said Mary Christensen. “It’s not in there.”

A radio commercial from It’s Time for a Change, another independent group, had to be rewritten after it claimed three-fourths of state Senate candidate Chris Marr’s campaign money comes from Western Washington or out of state and that GOP incumbent Brad Benson is a Spokane native. It was pulled from at least one radio station Friday when the Marr campaign showed KXLY-AM staff that more than half of his money comes from inside Spokane County, and that Benson, like Marr, is a California native.

The new ad says “nearly 50 percent” of Marr’s campaign funding comes from Western Washington or out of state. A check of the Public Disclosure Commission reports shows that even more of Benson’s money – about 58 percent – comes from Western Washington or out of state.

A photocopied sheet of paper stuffed in mailboxes and newspaper delivery tubes in northwest Spokane accuses President George Bush of being a murderer, former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley of being a pedophile and U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris of being “corrupt.” It offers no explanation for any of the labels, but asks “whatever happened to truth, justice and the American way?”

One of the recipients, Terrence Mosely, said he considers the ad a type of hate literature akin to the brochures once circulated by the Aryan Nations.

It’s signed by a group that calls itself Veterans for the American Way but lists no address or phone number, which is required by federal law for campaign literature. A spokesman for People for the American Way, a liberal-leaning group involved in national politics, said it has no offshoot for veterans and has never heard of Veterans for the American Way.

The campaign staff for both McMorris and her opponent, Democrat Peter Goldmark, said they had not heard of the group.

The funding and origin of the mailer from Citizens Action Group – which doesn’t mention any candidate by name – can be tracked through information provided on the ad.

The group has a Spokane post office box but gets all of its money from a pair of Olympia-based groups: the Speakers Roundtable, which gathers money for House Republicans, and the Leadership Council, which does the same for Senate Republicans. They in turn get their money from a variety of political sources, business groups and the service employees union.

Among the other claims on the Citizens Action Group ad was that Republicans would lock up repeat DUI offenders while “Democrat budget funds sports stadiums for pro sports teams.”

The Legislature last year did approve a bill by Rep. John Ahern, a Spokane Republican, to make a fourth drunken driving conviction a felony. That bill unanimously passed both houses of the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

The claim about sports stadiums is equally challengeable. Voters approved funding for a new Seahawks stadium in 1997, after members of both parties agreed to put it on the ballot. Republicans controlled the Legislature that year, but members of both parties from Spokane voted against the stadium.

The Legislature approved a series of tax packages for a new Mariners stadium in 1995, when Democrats controlled both chambers. All Spokane-area Republicans in the House voted for the Mariners’ tax package that year, but Senate Republicans from the area voted no.

The radio ad criticizing Marr is funded by a group called It’s Time for a Change, an Olympia-based group that got all of its money – nearly $1.3 million, according to the most recent PDC reports – from another Olympia-based group, ChangePAC.

ChangePAC has raised about $1.5 million in this campaign cycle, about half of it from the Building Industry Association of Washington. Both groups have the same post office box for an address and the same treasurer, Elliot Swaney, who is a lobbyist for the BIAW.